[drcy]

Not a sure fire test, but paint tends to lose it's black light fluorescence with time. Black lights are used to help judge the age of the paint and varnish on antique collectibles, such as fishing lures and toy banks. These antique items are sometimes repainted and revarnished in modern times, similar to how baseball cards are sometimes altered. Added new yellow paint will often fluoresce fairly brightly, whereas antique paint will have lost much of its fluorescence.

I also think examining the wear would be useful, as I would think you could tell if the paint was added recently to an old leather belt. Obviously the paint has wear.

It's hard to tell just from the picks, but, looking at it, it could be gilded in gold. Numerous things were gilded with gold in the old days, including furniture, important documents, book edges and cover titles and the lettering and edges on the Old Judge cabinets. The gold would be in the form of leaf or dust/specks, which can be seen under strong magnification, and gold does not tarnish/darken with time. The gold leaf or specks were glued on and much of it can flake off over time, but the gold left will remain bright and shiny. Genuine gilding in gold would definitely be consistent with it being an antique. That's an old fashioned technique that takes skill. And there's the cost of the gold. You can gild in metals other than gold (silver, copper, etc), but those metals tend to tarnish tarnish and darken, while the letters on this belt are still bright like gold. The 1911 T205 baseball cards have gilded borders-- you can see the specks of metal under a microscope--, but it's copper and has tarnished over the years. With antique gilding, it's always easy to tell if it's genuine gold-- because the metal is still bright and shiny as if new.

If the lettering is gilded in gold and shows appearance of wear and aging (flaking off, etc), it's more than safe to say it's antique. And, as you might expect, something being gilded in gold adds to its desirability and value-- if just because it makes it seem more fancy.